Current Events Portfolio

Post navigation

#merica — Shelby Thornhill Blog Entry #1

If you’ve ever trolled about social media for five minutes, chances are you’ve stumbled across the patriotic twitter accounts, Instagram posts or Facebook statuses making bold claims supported by #merica. These posts are super offensive to other races and ethnicities 95% of the time, even though America is supposedly the “melting pot” country. The other 5% of these twitter accounts are offensive to Americans themselves. Check out the link https://twitter.com/CloydRivers and read for yourself.

So, if all of these posts claim #merica stands triumphant over all other countries, solely backed up by racist remarks or vulgar jokes, can America really be considered the greatest country of all? It’s impossible to deny the facts stated in “The Newsroom”‘s opening scene; America is, “7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force, and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined. 25 of whom are allies” (Wikiquote-“The Newsroom-(U.S. TV Series)”). Do the people that believe America is still the greatest country in the world not know these facts? Or do they simply overlook them because they don’t agree with their argument?

That’s the problem with our country today…you either know too much, or you live by the cliché: “ignorance is bliss”. Stop arguing over which country can drink the most beer. Stop fighting over which country has the hottest girls. Start talking about the fact that a young African American male is 6 times more likely to be arrested in the United States. Start realizing that maybe we need to fix our own problems before we even attempt to fix anyone else’s. Even though the United States obviously has its fair share of issues, with more of an open-minded approach to the real problems we face, America can easily once again become the greatest country in the world. #merica